Amsterdam

The best thing I can say about this year's AMSTERDAM is that under David O. Russell's direction, once again Christian Bale delivers an entertainingly eccentric performance.  For any other deficiencies one may nitpick in this and the earlier films (THE FIGHTER, AMERICAN HUSTLE), the teaming seems to work, to foster some out of the box creativity.  Bale leads a strong cast, all of whom are fine but none of whom can really match him.  He in fact is the only reason to push through this two hour plus mess of a film, a big, awkward indulgence that doesn't even sport the director's usual energetic style.  Ultimately, a polemic disguised as a lighthearted murder mystery, with legitimate observations on politics, big business, art, friendship, and love clumsily woven in.

1933, NYC.  Burt Berendson (Bale) ia an M.D. who runs a practice with a clientele of WW1 veterans.  He himself served after his upper crust in-laws convinced him that his stock would rise if he had a couple of medals.  Instead, he got a back full of shrapnel and lost an eye.  Now he's also prone to sampling the medicine closet and estranged from his wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough, oddly Susan Sarandon-like). Burt and his lawyer friend/war buddy Harold Woodman (John David Washington) find themselves on the run after the daughter of a senator (who was their regiment commander and died under mysterious circumstances) is pushed under a car - right in front of them.  In the fracas, the true assailant blames the duo, kicking off a somewhat desperate race for the men to clear their names. 

The film jumps backward in time to France in 1918, when Burt and Harold first met.  In the infirmary they also meet a beguiling and artistic nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie) who convinces them to join her in Amsterdam to set up a life of bohemia.  Days and nights of dancing and revelry.  Everything is grand until Burt realizes he needs to return home to the States to his wife.  While Harold and Valerie have meanwhile become lovers, one morning he will find a note on his pillow.  What a surprise for our heroes to find her all those years later in '33, living as a captive in the estate of her brother Tom (Rami Malek) and wife Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy).  What do they know about the poisoning of Senator Meekins (Ed Begley, Jr.)?

The plot is even more convoluted than I've described.  Too tedious to recount further though it is noteworthy to point out that Mike Myers and Michael Shannon play a suspicious pair of glass eye manufacturers who are also Intelligence agents.  And Robert De Niro (by now a reg in Russell films) is Marine Corps officer Gil Dillenbeck, who was friends with Meekins and may be the key to foiling what we learn is an attempted American fascist coup of the FDR Administration.  

AMSTERDAM, as the opening card tells us, is partially based on truth.  There are two entirely different movies fighting for screen time and neither is very compelling.  There are a few guffaws but most of the attempts at 1930s-type gags (a recurring bit about fallen arches, Libby's crush on Dillenbeck) just don't land.  Russell's clusterfuck of a screenplay may be the worst of any high profile movie of 2022.  The marketing emphasized another yesteryear screwball whodunnit, quite back in vogue these days.  The director's noble but disorganized rants (very 21st century-ish in its venom) derail any mystery and by the third act we have a political thriller that fizzles. Such a shame.  The cast, which also includes Taylor Swift as Meekins' daughter, tries hard to little avail.

But Christian Bale is worth watching.  He often seems to be channeling Peter Falk's Columbo character yet adds plenty of his own tics.  His voice quite hilariously reminded me of one of my hearing aid patients.  I love that Bale is unafraid to downplay his sex appeal and just go for it.  He's as good at playing a rumpled, broken down old soul as actors twice his age. 

P.S. - More demerits for Emmanel Lubezki's ugly cinematography, which looks like color correction gone wrong.